Unraveled Together (15 page)

How could I forget? But aware that silence is the interrogator's best weapon, I don't answer.

“I love my sister, but that doesn't mean that all on my own I would come up with the crazy idea of dressing up in a bunny-girl outfit and delivering her erotic manuscript to you,” she says.

So Miranda staged the whole thing for her own ends! I knew it!

Which means that the supposedly fake confession Georgiana made her write to me was the truth after all!

I pull back my chair.

“You don't need to say anything else, Lindy. I get the picture. Let me walk you to the limo—”

She grabs my elbow, and such is her urgency that I sit down again.

“You don't understand, Mr. Hartwell. Miranda didn't have anything to do with it. And it wasn't my idea, either. I just did what I was told to do. I wore what I was told to wear and went ahead and delivered it.”

“Who used you to set me up, then, Lindy, who?”

She shakes her head.

“You'll find out when you meet the second person I'm going to take you to see,” she says, and while I admire her resolve to impose her will on me, I'm not in the least bit happy about it.

“Where to first then, Lindy?” I say, aware that I can't force her to tell me what I want to know. Boiling over with suppressed fury that I can't, I ask the question somewhat grimly.

“Miami, Florida,” she says.

“When?”

“Right now!”

I throw her my most charming smile.

“I really admire your loyalty to your sister, and your love for her. But even you can't expect me to jump on a plane this minute,” I say, thinking,
Because if you fly there with me, you'll cancel your meeting with Miranda in the city, and my operatives won'
t be able to follow you there and track her . . .

“And why not, Mr. Hartwell? I mean, aren't you this global superstar with planes and boats and countries all your own? What's a little flight to Florida to a powerful god like you?” she asks.

“In a few days, perhaps, Lindy, but surely you can't just expect me to set off on a wild-goose chase with you at a moment's notice.”

“Funny, I thought you were a man of action, Mr. Hartwell, this daredevil who owns the world and will stop at nothing to get what he wants . . .”

She's right. I don't normally stop at anything to get what I want. And, like it or not, what I want, more than I want to take my next breath, is to have Miranda again by my side. But not until I understand her, not until I know how and why she betrayed me, not until I can trust her again. And I suppose this is the only way for me to get close to the truth.

“Shall I call American Airlines, then, and get us on the next flight?” Lindy says.

I throw back my head and roar with laugher.

“And there I was, Lindy, thinking that you had my number . . .” I say, then press the intercom and tell Mary Ellen to have the helicopter pick us up immediately, and then to call my chief pilot and instruct him to ready the plane to take off for Miami in half an hour.

Chapter Fourteen

Robert, the Present

Ocean Drive, Miami, and as the candy-colored buildings of South Beach come into view, Lindy is wild with excitement.

“A limo, a private plane, Miami, and all in just a few hours! I've never even been to South Beach before. Are you sure you couldn't leave me here for a few days?” she says.

For a disquieting second it occurs to me that perhaps she has scammed me just so she can get a free trip to South Beach, and that the first person who is supposed to hand me the key to Miranda and to the mystery surrounding her doesn't exist at all. Perhaps Lindy and Miranda are just born liars, and I shouldn't have trusted either of them.

“Sorry, Mr. Hartwell. I didn't mean that. Here's the address. I'll wait for you at the Delano, but first let me tell you about the person you are going to see,” she says, and I feel like a bastard for having doubted her, even for a second. Then she gives me the lowdown on my meeting with the first person on her list, and her scheme for getting what I need from her.

Key Biscayne, an island connected by causeway to Miami, but which on closer inspection exists in another world. I know something of it from my late father, a bastion of the Republican Party who, during the Nixon era, used to fly down there to see supposedly retired members of the administration, chew over old times with them, plus play a round of golf or two.

Nowadays, Key Biscayne is redolent of faded grandeur, more Latin America than Kennebunkport, but still laced with big money—inherited money—at every turn. Particularly at the Ocean Club, an island paradise that isn't on a real island, a country club that isn't really in the country but is the perfect setting for Petronella Pickering. Or rather, the former Petronella Stone, Luke Stone's ex-wife and Miranda's stepmother.

The butler shows me to the terrace, where Petronella, resplendent in a white-and-gold chiffon caftan underneath which I can see the toned and tanned outline of her immaculate body, is languishing on a chaise longue.

As I approach her, she slowly, very slowly, removes her outsize white Valentino sunglasses, puts down her glass of pink champagne, and declares, “Why, Mr. Robert Hartwell, the world-­famous studio mogul himself! Welcome to my humble abode,” then holds out her hand for me to kiss.

I take it in mine lightly, don't kiss it, and then drop it as soon as is polite.

She motions me to sit on the end of the chaise, and after I cast a glance around the terrace and see that no other seating is available, I do, but am far from happy with her proximity to me.

“My little stepdaughter Lindy swore that the TV cameras and the photographs didn't do you justice, and that I ought to see for myself! And she was more than right . . . Now do tell me about the part you have for me in your next movie. The lead, naturally, I assume,” she says.

With those few words, I understand exactly what Lindy has sent me here to experience in person: Miranda's stepmother is English, upper class, and eerily similar to Georgiana.

I give her a warm smile.

“The role of a lifetime, Mrs. Pickering.”

“Petronella . . .”

“Petronella. The role of a lifetime.”

“Which is?”

I take a swig of champagne.

“Lindy, of course, has the greatest respect for you, and has only the most cordial things to say,” I begin.

“Naturally,” Petronella says, and tosses her head. “Now do tell me more about my character, Mr. Hartwell.”

“The role is that of a wonderful, kind stepmother, a stepmother with two stepdaughters. The younger is loving and cooperative, but the elder . . .” I say, then wait for her to fall into the trap Lindy has suggested I set for her.

“Just like my dear little stepdaughter Miranda! I could win an Oscar in my sleep playing the part of a pure and blameless stepmother forced to deal with a little bitch like that!” she drawls, and if I hadn't come here seeking crucial information about Miranda, I'd be inclined right then and there to toss Petronella Pickering over the terrace and into the ocean below.

Instead, I nod.

And then she starts talking. As she does, she inches her way down the chaise and slithers closer and closer to me, until her thigh is pressed against mine, and the heat of her body starts to rival the heat of the day.

I force myself not to push her away, and instead shift my position so that I am no longer in contact with her body, and wish that I were anywhere else but in the presence of Petronella Pickering. But however virulently I dislike her, and how much the venom in her voice makes me want to turn a deaf ear to her words, I'm here to listen, and listen I will.

“Miranda, Miranda. Or rather, Mandy, as my late ex-husband, Luke, used to call her. ‘My lovely little Mandy,' he'd say, and I'd bite my lip and change the subject. It took me a while, though, years, in fact, of pampering him, pandering to his slightest whim, his every desire, but in the end, I managed to pilot his emotions in another direction, until ‘my lovely little Mandy' was replaced by ‘my beautiful wife, Petronella.' And not long after that I got what I wanted; as far as her father was concerned, Miranda might just as well have vanished into thin air,” she says, and shoots me a cat-with-the-cream smile.

I give her a look so dark and disapproving that I'm not surprised that she blanches, and then hastily tempers her boast with, “I don't mean that exactly the way it sounds . . . It's just that, when it came to Miranda and her place in her father's life, Britannia ultimately ruled, and America became a mere colony. My own personal colony . . .”

No wonder Miranda was so threatened by the very thought of Georgiana, and that everything she gleaned from the press about her, and later on from me, must have evoked her stepmother, Petronella. Georgiana and Petronella, two peas in a pod, really. Both so chilling, both so cold-blooded. Petronella, the wicked stepmother who stole Miranda's father from her; Georgiana, whose reincarnation from the dead threatened Miranda so much. I'm beginning to understand exactly why Lindy sent me here, exactly why meeting Petronella may well make me understand, then forgive, Miranda for her lie by omission.

At the same time, Petronella is so infuriating that I can't stop myself from making a dig at her: “But what about Luke Stone's last love, the Thai girl . . .” I say, just to drive home to her that I knew that Luke had ultimately left her.

“By then I didn't want him anymore,” she says airily, then adds, “Come, Mr. Hartwell, let me show you the paintings my dear departed husband did of me.”

I hesitate.

“And I believe there are one or two of darling Miranda in the collection, as well,” she adds as an enticement.

I follow her into a large drawing room. There, on every space of the wall, paintings of Petronella, much younger, stark naked, and in a variety of poses.

I search, in vain, for paintings of Miranda.

Observing, Petronella stalks over to a closet.

“Oh, very well! I forgot,” she says, and hands me two small unframed canvases.

Miranda, aged about sixteen, plump, pretty, and coltishly innocent and awkward. Already so very lovable.

“Luke painted them just before I married him. She wasn't much to look at, even back then when young girls are usually at their best, don't you think? I mean, I could hardly believe my eyes when that gorgeous hunk of a man Warren Courtney was instantly captivated by her at my wedding. She was so very plain, you see,” she says.

I shake my head.

“I don't see, Mrs. Pickering,” I say.

She gives a light, frothy laugh, and again I am forcibly reminded of Georgiana.

“Did you happen to know my late wife, the Lady Georgiana, Mrs. Pickering?” I ask on a whim.

“Petronella, Mr. Hartwell, Petronella. Now do let me show you out. I look forward to becoming your muse and working with you on your latest picture . . .”

Once outside, I check my cell phone. A new habit for me, but one I've been forced to form simply because maybe, perhaps, Miranda will text me, and if she does, I want to know about it.

But she hasn't.

It doesn't matter, though, because I'm going to swallow my pride, call her, tell her I forgive her and that I want her back.

In the limo, I sit back as the Miami skyline comes closer and closer, and plan exactly what I am going to say: that I understand, that I love her, and that I want to make her my wife.

I am just about to dial the number when the phone rings.

His voice a combination of triumph and relief, Peterson announces, “Mr. Hartwell, my number five operative just got back to me with a full report of Miss Stone's movements. She spent most of the day at 40 Central Park South with a Mr. Warren Courtney.”